York can feel like a museum-city, surrounded by medieval walls, riddled with historic snickleways and the towering minster standing at the centre of it all. The streets are clean and ready for tourists, filled with hotels, airbnbs, souvenir shops and chain restaurants. Most of the late twentieth-century architecture has been erased or sanitised so as to not disrupt the ambience of the ancient architecture. The homeless have been cleared from the city centre.
During the SLAPover residency, I filmed a performance called ‘Ghost Tour’. Rolling a shopping trolley overspilling with loose toilet rolls through the busy city centre, I felt like an alien carrying this unglamorous, practical load through town. But why? Why should York only be about the past? Why must the realities of the present be hidden? Does history stop now?
Shot by Jim Talbot
Performed and edited by Minyung Im
Installation at SLAPover/York Mediale, 2018
Photos by Stephen Daniels